A very tight pulp paranormal-crime procedural adventure game that is about as enriching pulp novels and only about twice as long to finish. The big adventure game swings feel really exciting without ever getting too complicated with its flowchart and all of the character work between each protagonist is laser focused. The ending is pretty fumbled but the game doesn't spend much time developing themes beyond the literal narrative events that happen to the characters so it doesn't feel like a huge loss. There are a lot of ways that this game could be rearranged and become exceptional, but it's truly pretty good just taking it as a little flippy novel.

Jimmy and the Puslating Mass is a stone cold classic. Games and RPGs in particular are frequently about the potential of imagination, the possibilities of human will, and the reckless clinging on to something lost: states, morals, love, life. What the eponymous character is clinging to is unclear for most of the game, but what is clear is the faithful representation of how fucking confusing shit is when anything can be anything and you don't know shit. Jimmy is afraid. His family and the nice people act in ways that don't make sense. Most things outside of him are out to hurt him (like a cute turtle wearing a box), yet we push on without the faintest idea of what is happening or what is at stake. The horror continues but becomes to be mixed with the beautiful and exciting. The game looks very kitschy and precocious from afar, but it demonstrates a really earnest and expert command of how ideas and identities don't come from nowhere. It drills through this naive idea about fixing the family unit and twists into a really earnest family drama, still told through the eyes of our ever imaginitive boy hero. Jimmy becomes an intensely fleshed out individual, first by the world of his dreams and then by his ability to understand the very real things it reflects.

Aside from a few silly choke points made confusing by the encounter skip system, this is a masterful, vivid, and expansive RPG that should be an easy fit for literally any fans of the genre who fuck with/don't mind the horror psychodrama elements. Thanks to Scitydreamer (of Indiehellzone, I Hate You, Please Suffer ) who has been banging the drum about how criminally neglected this game is in the modern canon of western RPG Maker entries for a while. I will poking at the post-game stuff for some time because nothing has hooked me like this since FFX.

Death of a Wish is a luscious and vibrant follow-up (not a sequel) to melessthanthree's debut Luach: Born of a Dream. Where Lucah was a fearful and taciturn character-action romp through dark corridors, Death of a Wish is boisterous and vengeful, busting open its predecessor's hallways for a complete RPG experience: exploration, party members, item hunting, secret bosses, the works. Death of a Wish's combat is cutthroat, demanding you juice every possible option available to you as the lead Christian recklessly stomps down his bloody warpath without ever making you feel too weak. I completed my first play of the game at level 1 and the hardest difficulty available, while for others there are really generous difficulty modifiers beyond plain difficulty selection. As you advance, the genre-familiar action systems and narrative pieces (for those who've played Luach) unravel to take on new forms and demands. The player and Christian must learn to let go of what they think is right, even if it is painful or uncomfortable, to truly achieve their goals. Death of a Wish is a sublime action game that really cannot be passed up by fans of the genre or those looking for expansive queer stories in fiction that go beyond romance and slice of life.

(this one is a little steam review-y because I wrote over there first hehe)

A really phenomenal development upon Onikakushi-hen, Watanagashi-hen roots the exceptional horror story at its core with something even more fearsome than ghosts and curses: the unreconciled feudal remnants left behind in a rapidly imperializing nation. Ryu07's knows horror doesn't come from pulp or genre, but from the unmistakable shocks of reality, when what happening in front of you cannot possibly be understood alone. Watanagashi is a heart-rending and essential entry in Ryu07's repertoire and in the crawling mystery of Hinamizawa.

God I finally fucking finished this shit. Where The Third was a big forward facing world expansion, Hajimari is a fucking victory lap. The way it doubles back on everyone's arc in the main plot is a little exhausting, where I often found myself wishing this was just C's story with occasional interludes with the rest of the cast. It's all really slight, which might feel like a downgrade considering how strong a game Kevin and Ries were able to support, but the main star is really the Reverie Corridor and the daydreams. The goofy ass expanded cast is so nonsensically power-scaled to reflect who's in the spotlight of the Erebonia arc that I can't get mad about shit like the Liberl team being horrible units. The numbers go up a ridiculous amount to the point where I feel bad for the bosses. The Reverie Corridor is definitely a little too long at a high level view but if it kept dripping out daydreams I would have never complained. If Trails had to pivot to being a VN should Falcom crumble, it might be to its benefit. Falcom has such a rich sense of character that they can put whoever the fuck in front of me and I'll clap and laugh like a seal. Sure hope Kuro is a little shorter 🫣

Really lovely game that will be a YA RPG cornerstone for decades. Holds itself back trying to do too much normal RPG stuff with horrible dungeons and muddy stat growth when it could have benefited from a tighter puzzle battle approach and an earlier integration of the Yume Nikki-type segments. It also would have been great to have had table setting for the bespoke twist sooner so that it could actually mean something other than being some twisted fucked up shit, but the character work and the vibe cultivated by the art and music are so so vibrant that I really don't care so much.

Middle of the road shmup with a neat cast and setting but really half thought out shot and power system lacking clear character diversity. There's a huge risk-reward system as you have improved shot while grazing, but focus shots are very situational and lack the same graze benefits. Enemies tend to drop just one power up so collection is more important than clearing the screen, but obviously certain enemies will be bigger hazards. Each character has mostly the same speed so there's a very singular way the game wants to be approached for the most part and that means just fucking dealing with the actual obstacles while you scramble to collect. I like feeling weak in a shmup but it feels like emerging genre staples were just kind of copied in (tap vs focus shot, breakable boss parts but they do nothing) The player needs just one more tool or a standalone focus to approach situations expressively.

Beautiful and methodical pseudo-fanfiction about the works of Kenji Miyazawa and really more about his legacy in culture. There's a big element of this game absolutely not having the same takeaway about Miyazawa's works, especially in the way this game thinks of the Galactic Railroad, but it is making delicate and future-looking moves with the adventure game formula that grip the RPG Maker community to this day that make it real easy to not get so hung up on that. Ihatovo Monogatari imposes a quest to chase down a fleeting mythical figure against the daily mundanity of the downtrodden workers, farmers, peasants, and youth. While you float through fantastical moments, life moves on: the young family moves south for the winter, the scorned worker is chased out of town suddenly, the boy you helped out last week died of a fever off screen. The things you chase in life can only amount to the character of your actions that get you there. Live wisely, fiercely, and kindly to struggle along side those who surround you.

CWs for Elsinore: Drowning, knives, body horror, torture, dismemberment.

A very exciting attempt at Shakespearean gaming that makes a bold pitch without too much substance behind it. Managing the time loop and all the disparate leads rocks for the front half of the game. Elsinore Castle has a strong sense of place and all of the characters are just rendered enough to both capture the play and suggest a larger thought about Hamlet. The game however breaks away from the original text a little too strongly and suddenly and reads a lot more like fanfiction without critical reasoning for the alterations made. Some of these alternate threads are really exciting, but the ones which are weighted as end states are too dull and head-nodding, punching back their chance to shine to instead hand you a list of monologues to pick from before credits The in your face Umineko references are frankly a little ridiculous when this game ends up demonstrating nothing about how WTC handles the gravity of time loops because I was definitely not playing with the intention of "saving" Ophelia at any point. Elsinore is a fun adventure-like Hamlet dollhouse to pick at for its opening hours or so, but if you're looking for careful thoughts on the original play or a tightly composed time loop narrative, you're not going to find it here.

CN for Void Stranger: Sexual harassment

A lush and witty sokobon-hybrid that stumbles over making sense of its mutli-genre style brakes. The way the tile swap game slowly shifts in and out of a Zelda-like dunegeon crawler to a La Mulana action-riddler is really breathtaking and exciting, but I ended up feeling way less about this as it came to a close. Where Zeroranger effortlessly lines up its sparse narrative with the stressful emotional player-arc of trying to 1cc a shmup, Void Stranger boasts a generic mélange of "don't give up" vibes that fails to celebrate its own strengths or its genre heritage. The constant micro genre-shifts really are delightful, but they walk too far away from the core frustration-to-lightbulb-moment cycle of this kind of puzzle game. I like the grunt work and guess-and-check solutions this game makes a player deal with, but after a certain point I really do not need to descend the tower twice per reattempt of the final sequence. I thought the problem with this game would be having too much text, but besides the dull swing at a System Erasure cinematic universe, the story is perfectly tender and understated despite all the women being naked for the entire last third. What I'd really like to see from System Erasure in the future is a bit more follow-through on the clear central design idea and an understanding of where to put the period on the game. Void Stranger is a blast and really so so so exciting to pull apart but it's far too gray in-between the text behemoth of La Mulana and their own debut arcade joyride.